1. Field
One or more embodiments relate to an apparatus and method of encoding a three-dimensional (3D) image, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method of encoding one image using compressed information of another one image of two images to form a 3D image.
2. Description of the Related Art
A stereoscopic image is a three-dimensional (3D) image which provides visual information about depth and space at the same time. Here, unlike stereoscopy that presents a different viewpoint image to each eye, in order to provide an image as perceived from a different aspect whenever a viewpoint of a viewer changes, an image taken from a different viewpoint is needed. Applications using an image taken from a different aspect include a free-viewpoint TV scheme, a 3D TV scheme, etc. A free-viewpoint TV scheme allows a user to optionally change a viewpoint on an object by acquiring multi-viewpoint images of the same scene and analyzing the images. A 3D TV presents a different image to each eye, allowing a viewer to perceive virtual 3D depth. However, an image taken from different viewpoints includes a massive amount of data, and thus it is difficult to secure a network infrastructure and a ground-wave bandwidth when compressing and transmitting the image.
Instead of compressing and transmitting all images from different viewpoints, a depth image is generated and compressively transmitted along with images from part of the viewpoints, thereby reducing an amount of data to be compressed. A depth image is an image to represent a distance between a viewer and an object in a color image as a value of 0 to 255, and thus characteristics thereof are similar to those of a color image.